


The Body That Lies

by Lafayette1777



Category: Buzzfeed - Fandom, Buzzfeed Blue, Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Banter, Ghost Hunters, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Haunting, M/M, X-Files References, because of course, hey quick question what the fuck am i doing, it's not unsolved fic unless you use the word 'wheeze' at least once, the devil's tramping ground, they insult each other cause they're in love obviously i guess, why do i always gotta fill fun lighthearted stuff with angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 12:37:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12169029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: Ryan is dead and haunting Shane. Because he misses him, of course.But also to prove a point.





	The Body That Lies

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i have written rpf in the past and imma do it again in the future because it's stupid and i love it, but i never know what to write here. umm don't sue me?? jesus. idk man this is fiction completely, i'm not making money off it, it's all bullshit, so no one take it personally. it comes from a place of love. 
> 
> also even though he's dead in this fic i love ryan bergara with all my heart so please lord protect him at all costs
> 
> recommended listening:
> 
> Anyone's Ghost - The National  
> Is This What You Wanted - Leonard Cohen  
> Gold - Chet Faker (from which the title of this fic originates)

What no one ever mentions about death is the strangeness of its rituals—the paperwork, the collection of items into bags and boxes, the deconstruction and compartmentalization of a life. They don’t mention the peculiarity of coming home to find that the mail has still been delivered and the news is still on TV and the ground beef in the fridge still hasn’t quite thawed. No one ever mentions the aching absurdity of knowing that his last text to Ryan went unread, and will always be unread. It’s a hanging thread pulling on Shane’s body, unspooling him slowly. 

_I love you too, asshole. Text me when you get home safe._

Now, swathed in the late night emptiness that seems to press in from all sides at once, he supposes he probably should have said something different.

Or perhaps just sooner.

 

 

 

He tells himself that it’s the silence that bothers him the most, these days.

He moves desks to avoid the vacancy beside him, wears headphones for eight hours a day to drown out the void that Ryan used to fill with joyous, incorrigible bullshit while he researched or edited or brainstormed. He bites his nails down to nubs and stares at the too-bright opalescence of his laptop screen until his eyes burn. 

“It’s not fun without _him_ ,” he tells Brent, when the question of the fate of Unsolved inevitably arises. “There’s no point.”

“You don’t think he’d want it continued?”

“I don’t know what he’d want,” Shane mutters, kneading at the bridge of his nose. Something inside him is beginning to crack, he thinks. Or maybe it’s just his voice. “I don’t know—”

“Fine,” Brent says quickly, features contorting into a potent mix of sympathy and discomfort. He’s already backing away. “It’s all fine. Whatever you want.”

Shane just nods without looking up. The silence returns. 

At home, things are worse. There are no nonsense videos to film, no facades to maintain. The shadows in the corners of his bedroom are unintriguing—the world distinctly lacks in the preternatural department in Ryan’s absence. He spends a long time with his eyes locked on the ceiling of his bedroom before he can stir his limbs into action. 

In the bathroom, there’s a tube of toothpaste staring up at him from the floor tiles. 

Shane allows himself to look at it for one long moment, then counts backwards from five, takes a deep breath, and places it back on the vanity. He does not think—he’s getting rather good at becoming a lacuna, detached and empty. The water from the tap is cool, but tastes vaguely metallic on his tongue. He raises his head up just in time to watch the toothpaste do a backflip off the sink onto the floor. 

“No,” he says quietly, feeling his throat close. He places the tube back in it’s place and lets out a long breath through his nose, closing his eyes. A second later, the tube hits the floor again. “No.” He shakes his head, feeling something desperate and hysterical rise in his throat. “Fuck you. Nope.”

“Yes,” whispers a familiar voice, close enough to stir the hairs on the back of Shane’s neck. 

He faints. 

 

 

 

_“Come on, Agent Mulder. We’ve got demons to fuck with.”_

_“Does that mean you’re Scully?” Ryan retorts. “Why do you get to be Scully?”_

_“Because I’m the gorgeous skeptic, obviously,” says Shane, twisting around to wink at him without breaking stride._

_“This is already horrible.”_

_The walls of the empty subway tunnel are wet with condensation, littered sporadically with graffiti. Shane shines his mag light on one stretch of brick with a_ Fight Club _quote splattered haphazardly over the arching wall. “Look, the demon’s a Fincher fan. Somehow that makes perfect sense.”_

_“Dude, I just got chills,” says Ryan, stopping in his tracks._

_“We are literally in an underground tunnel, so I’m not entirely sure what you expect.” Shane steps back toward him so that Ryan can see his smirk. “Imagine how much scarier this would be if you were alone.”_

_“Fuck you.”_

_“I’m just saying.” Shane shrugs. “If I got eaten by ghosts right now you’d be so fucked, out here on your own.”_

_There’s the sound of scuttling footsteps from somewhere down the tunnel and, with a yelp, Ryan leaps closer to Shane’s side. “That’s a fucking rat, Ryan.”_

_“Rats don’t make that much fucking noise.”_

_“The tunnel reverberates it.” Shane snorts. “However, it is charming that you think I can protect you from the undead.”_

_“Is it a rat or is it the undead, Shane? Make up your mind.”_

_The city official that let them prowl through the tunnel for the better part of the afternoon won’t let them stay the night. It’s hard to be upset about this fact when, later, they find themselves ensconced in a warm motel room bathed in sepia light. There are two beds in the room. They only end up using one._

_There’s something about filming Unsolved, something deep in the nature of it, that feels as though it’s exempt from reality. It exists in a timeline without consequences, without expectations. They can rest in the place between explained and unexplained. Known and unknown. It makes it entirely too easy to subscribe to the rather persuasive idea of skin against skin._

_Shane doesn’t believe in much, but he believes in this._

_His feet hang off the edge of the bed farther than usual so that he can press his nose into Ryan’s collarbone. There are fingers in his hair, a warm hand pressed against his back. There’s a simplicity that he’s sure wouldn’t exist anywhere else._

_“Listen,” Shane says, eventually, without raising his head. “You’re always claiming that paranormal shit watches you in the dark, when you sleep, whatever. But why do you assume it’s evil?”_

_“What do you mean?” Ryan’s voice reverberates through both their chests._

_“Like, what if they’re just watching out for you? Making sure you have good dreams?”_

_Ryan is silent for so long that Shane finally lifts his chin. The other man is smirking that irresistibly fond smirk, hair falling across his forehead. “Are you actually positing a genuine, unironic paranormal theory right now?” He’s wheezing before he gets through the last word. “I think I like you better post-coital.”_

_“Jesus, look what you’ve done to me,” replies Shane, with an exaggerated sigh. He drops his head, relishes his own languid inhale. He’s sure Ryan can feel his smile, even if he can’t see it. “Do you think we can order popcorn from room service, Mulder?”_

 

 

 

A stroke of uncharacteristically good luck allows him to avoid braining himself on the side of the tub when he falls. Shane awakes slowly, one sore hip pressing against the cold tile, the toothpaste on the floor gradually coming into focus in his line of sight. He doesn’t notice when the overhead light flickers off as he pulls himself into an awkward, half-folded sitting position.

The room is too quiet.

Then he sobs for a bit, crumpled up on the floor, in a way he never really has, not since the accident or in the surreal weeks that have followed. Something has bent and broken inside him, and now the gates are open, and everything feels like too much and too little all at once. He thinks, distantly, _I want to go home_ , but he already is home so what he probably means is _I want him back._

He calms down, eventually; returning to quiet stoicism feels the same as pulling himself out of unconsciousness not so long ago. He’s numb enough that the sight of a pair of sneakered feet, flickering strangely in his peripheral vision, doesn’t hardly shock him at all. 

“I told you ghosts were real, you dick,” says Ryan, his words emanating from everywhere at once. 

Shane swallows, his voice thick. He doesn’t look up from the floor. “No, they’re not. I’m having a psychotic break.”

The exasperated sigh that follows sends a chill down his spine, even as the memory of other, similar sighs stirs something warm inside him. “What’s it going to fucking take, Shane? Jesus.”

Shane just curls around the edge of the tub, breathing raggedly and making a point not to look up. After a moment, heavy footsteps rattle off down the hallway, and then there comes the sound of glass breaking. Ryan’s voice is clear as can be. “I’m gonna fuck up all your shit until you believe you’re being haunted.”

Shane recovers his breath enough to shout back, “How do I know I’m not hallucinating all this and breaking my own shit?”

Rather than a reply, there’s a metallic bang, and then the sound of the microwave door popping open. “Fuck,” murmurs Shane, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Don’t do what you’re about to do.”

“You’re not hallucinating and you know it,” says Ryan. In the kitchen, he’s a black smudge next to the microwave and a roll of tin foil, only visible out of the corner of Shane’s eye and halfway melded with the evening shadows. His voice is sourceless, partially distorted in a way that no mic can simulate. It sets Shane’s teeth on edge. 

“I miss you,” Shane says, finally. The fight goes out of him; he avoids the shards of a knocked over lamp and deflates into an armchair. The black smudge moves, too—it’s presence is almost something he feels, rather than sees. It’s aura is so cold that it almost burns. 

“I miss you too,” says Ryan, and something touches the back of Shane’s neck. It’s almost tender.

 

 

 

_Grisly murders in a frontier sod house is what has brought them out here, or something along those lines. It’s not the threat of the paranormal that has Shane on edge but rather the gelid, ceaseless wind pulling across the empty plains outside. The murders happened outside the actual house, so they’ve installed themselves in a tent on the “most active” part of the dilapidated farm for the night, bundled in layers of down and fleece while the nylon of the tent flaps endlessly in the breeze._

_Ryan is sitting up, face peeking out of the hood of his heavy coat, EMF detector held out like an offering. “Dude...it’s really fucking dark in here.”_

_“That is how nighttime works,” says Shane, lying motionless beside him, wrapped like a burrito in three coats and a sleeping bag that isn’t quite long enough to reach past his shoulders._

_“Shut up, Shane.”_

_“Have you looked outside? It’s even darker out there.”_

_“Shut the fuck up, Shane.”_

_“This tent is too small,” Shane says, folding and unfolding his legs into a number of awkward, cramped positions._

_“It’s really not. You’re just a fucking praying mantis,” replies Ryan._

_“I’m gonna unzip the door and poke my feet out.”_

_“Oh my god, please don’t.”_

_Shane laughs, and shimmies one arm out of his sleeping bag. “Why? You’re not the one that’s gonna get dragged to hell by his ankles.”_

_“Maybe I don’t want you to get dragged to hell either.”_

_Shane is in the process of unzipping the outer flap, but pauses to look back and smile sardonically. “Oh, how sweet.”_

_Ryan throws a mitten at the back of his head. “Shut the fuck up.”_

_“It’s true love!” A rush of cold air flows in as he pushes his feet through the opening in the bottom of the door._

_“Oh, god, it’s fucking cold,” says Ryan, curling in on himself further. “I hate you so much right now.”_

_Shane just laughs, burrowing back into his own cocoon of coats and pulling the hat further down over his ears. The baked, desolate earth is hard beneath his back. Ryan shivers miserably for a while until the sound of grass crunching underfoot has him sitting ramrod straight again, absolutely still. “What was that?”_

_Shane shrugs, as much as he can in his current state. “A bear?” The whites of Ryan’s eyes are visible even in the remarkably pressing darkness. “Ryan,” Shane says, voice soft, suddenly deprived of all pretense or ironic inflection in a way it so rarely is. “I know a way we can keep warm.”_

_The tension slips out of Ryan’s shoulders. “I don’t know how this is supposed to work,” he says, with a wheezing laugh, motioning toward the layers separating them. Still, he leans down to press his lips to Shane’s, fingers curling into the collar of his denim jacket. Shane manages to wriggle an arm free and cup Ryan’s face in his palm, but he finds he’s smiling almost too broadly to return the kiss._

 

 

 

The woman who lives in the apartment below him is in the throes of late middle age, her hair streaked with silver to match the wire around her turquoise jewelry. He can tell that she’s entertained by him, in the way that most people are—because he’s absurdly tall, because he works for Buzzfeed, because he is who he is. Amicable though their relationship may be, he’s not pleased to see her flash him an imploring smile as he joins her in front of the ground floor mailboxes. It’s been too long a night. 

“Everything alright, dear?” she asks. “It sounded like you had a break-in last night with all that crashing around. 

Without meeting her gaze, he deadpans, “It’s the poltergeist that’s moved in with me.”

Ryan, it seems, is here to stay, though they’re both rather unclear as to why. Regardless, Shane has to keep buying new light bulbs, because they have an alarming tendency to flicker and die in Ryan’s presence, and new kitchenware, because sometimes it seems the only method that Ryan has of getting his attention is breaking his shit. 

At work, his productivity takes a nosedive. He nods off at his desk and then wakes up to Google, in equal amounts, _how to move on to the afterlife if you’re a ghost_ and _how to bring back the dead._

“What’s wrong with you?” Jen asks one afternoon, while watching him chew gum furiously in an attempt to stay awake. 

“Ryan’s ghost is haunting me,” he says, without missing a beat. “Or I’m losing my mind. Possibly both.”

He doesn’t hear her reply, doesn’t really hear anything, not until he’s in the lobby and someone’s telling him to _take some time off, clear your head, come back when you’re ready._

There are many miles between the office and home; he walks them anyway, a peripheral black shadow matching him step for step.

The problem is this: he exists in a gray area. He and Ryan always have. And no one, at the office or anywhere else, has ever really known what to do with whatever the two of them were or were not. Shane is not Ryan’s boyfriend. Ryan had a girlfriend—a girlfriend who never knew about the reality behind their relationship on Unsolved, and never will know, since that seems to be what Ryan wanted. Grief has complicated further what was already rather difficult to get a grip on. Best friends are simple; it’s much more troublesome to explain the hollowness in his gut when it comes to _best friends who sometimes have sex, but only when the rest of the universe isn’t looking._

“What do you want?” Shane says, once they’re back in the hazy twilight of his apartment. The news on the TV in the other room turns to static as he puts on the kettle. “Why are you here?”

“Can’t this just be a social haunting?”

“You always said ghosts have unfinished business,” Shane says, reaching for one of the new mugs. Ryan’s presence is cold, beside him—Shane is suddenly possessed by the desperate urge to see Ryan’s face again, to look into the darkness of his eyes, but he knows that if he turns to look all that will be there is a shadow, and then nothing at all. 

Ryan is silent for a long while, and Shane worries that he’s slipped off into the ether, or whatever the hell else might be out there in the sinew and bone of the universe. A universe he once thought he understood. Then, quietly, Ryan’s strange, distorted voice says, “I don’t know. I don’t know—something just feels undone. Do you want me to leave?”

“No,” says Shane immediately. Instinctively, he feels exposed. He looks down at the tea in his hands, grips it tightly so that Ryan won’t vault it off the counter. “Brent thinks I should keep doing Unsolved, you know. Thinks it’s what you would want.”

Again, there’s a long pause. Something cold presses against Shane’s side. Ryan says, “Maybe that’s a good place to start.”

 

 

 

_“Look, even if ghosts are real, they’re probably racist.”_

_“What?” Ryan snorts, snapping his head up from the camera in his lap._

_“You know, ‘cause they’re from the past. And the past is racist. Also the present.”_

_“Why do you assume all ghosts are white?_ That’s _racist.” Ryan’s eyes swivel around the dark corners of the room. “Representation, Shane. Christ.”_

_From where they are, sitting back to back in the center of the room, Shane’s long sigh only presses him closer to Ryan. “That’s fair.”_

_There’s a silence, and a moment later Shane feels Ryan go rigid behind him. “You good, Ryan?”_

_“That shadow fucking moved, dude.”_

_“Did you get it on camera?”_

_“Umm—oh wait, that was my shadow.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Shut the fuck up, Shane.”_

_Shane shrugs, barely containing his laugh. “I literally just said ‘oh.’”_

_“Okay, here’s what I don’t fucking understand: you don’t believe in ghosts but you believe that Ben Franklin was in a sex cult.”_

_“There’s like actual, empirical evidence that Ben Franklin was into weird sex,” Shane says, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Whereas all we have for ghost evidence is you saying ‘oh, I’ve got chills, oh, there’s a fucking shadow, oh, I’m Ryan Bergara and nothing can ever be a coincidence.’”_

_Ryan is laughing now, his head lolled back onto Shane’s shoulder._

_“Listen,” Shane says, after they’ve managed to quiet down again. “These ghosts are probably homophobes, though, at the very least.”_

_“That’s probably safe to assume.” He feels Ryan giggle. “I think I know where you’re going with this.”_

_“I’m just thinking of ways to get them angry enough to eat our souls.”_

_He hears Ryan shift behind him, and then their backs are no longer pressing together. “Come here, motherfucker.”_

_Shane turns around, grinning. “Are you talking to me or the ghosts?”_

_Ryan answers by pulling their mouths together, a hand on the back of Shane’s neck. He forgets about the dark, dusty room, about the chill seeping up from the dirt floor. He threads an arm around Ryan so that their chests are flush against each other and lets out a long, warm breath through his nose. There really isn’t anything like this, he thinks distantly, and immediately doesn’t know what to make of that thought._

 

 

 

“The Devil’s Tramping Ground,” says Ryan, one night. “In North Carolina. That can be your comeback episode.”

Shane just hums, reaching for his laptop. 

“It’s this weird, inexplicable circle in the woods where nothing grows. You can camp on top of it, apparently, but sometimes fucked up shit happens if you do.” Ryan’s excited—even in this strange half-life, that much hasn’t changed. 

Shane is quiet for a long time, staring blankly at the screen and tugging at a loose string on the sleeve of his flannel. Finally, he murmurs, “It won’t be like it was, you know. It won’t be fun.”

The darkness has become comforting. It’s no longer something unknown—it’s simply the space where Ryan resides. Shadows greet him like they never have before. After a long silence, Ryan says, “I know.”

It’s not particularly difficult to get the ball rolling again, even if he does have to dodge some questions about why exactly Shane has so swiftly changed his mind about the fate of Unsolved. His answer is that it’s not really going to be Unsolved anymore, not really. It’s going to be something else. He just doesn’t know what yet. 

He summons the crew back together again and then they’re off to North Carolina with very little idea of what exactly the show will be like in the final edit. Shane wonders, vaguely, if Ryan can accompany him—his curiosity isn’t sated until he’s sitting in a tent in the middle of the woods of Chatham County, trying to engage the literal devil in conversation. He’s as sarcastic as ever, as unfazed by whatever the supernatural world may supposedly intend to throw at him, but there’s something bitter in his tone, now. A harder edge than there used to be with Ryan at his side, playing believer to his skeptic. 

“Come on, you coward,” Shane says, holding the camera up to the tent’s open flap. “Do some devil shit.”

Shane tries not to jump when Ryan’s voice reverberates in his ear. “You’re straight up insulting Satan right now. Good plan.”

Shane can hear the smile in Ryan’s hazy voice, even if all he can see of him is the shifting black outline of something in the corner of the tent. “I’m trying to engage him in a dialogue. If he’s not a coward, I expect he will put forth a rebuttal, like any civilized creature.”

“Honestly, you deserve to be haunted. You’re a dumbfuck.”

Shane laughs, and sets down the camera. He doesn’t turn it off, though—he’s interested, on some level, about what this conversation sounds like to anyone else. Is he talking to himself? Or is Ryan’s voice caught on camera irrefutable evidence of the supernatural? Regardless, he’ll edit this out in the end. There’s something intimate about the idea of his own personal haunting that he doesn’t want to share with others. Ryan seems to have shirked the afterlife for him and him alone, and there’s a togetherness about it that he can’t let go of. If the goal of all this is to collect evidence of ghosts, then it’ll have to go unfulfilled for now.

“I don’t think the devil is actually here,” says Shane. “I don’t think there’s anything here, besides you and some weird fucking soil or something.”

Ryan is quiet for a moment, the dark shape of him appearing to squirm. “No, there’s something else here too.”

“Oh yeah?”

But he doesn’t elaborate. Ryan’s voice is softer, now. All he says is, “Shane, it’s beautiful. It’s all real, and it’s beautiful.”

He doesn’t hear from Ryan again for weeks, not until he’s back in LA, editing furiously and starting to lose his mind at the thought of Ryan slipping off for good. It’s past midnight and he’s hunched over his laptop, splicing and coloring and isolating, when he suddenly becomes aware of a presence on the sofa next to him. The sigh he lets out is equal parts relief and surprise. 

“How’s it going?” Ryan asks. The battery in the camera on the end table abruptly dies. 

“It’s different,” Shane says. “The whole show is heavier, no matter how I put it together.”

“Is that bad?”

“I dunno.” He really doesn’t. Doesn’t know what to make of the anger in his voice on camera, or the sudden vigor with which he pursues the supernatural supposedly lurking in the shadows of America’s most haunted locations. He’s not the sardonic bystander anymore, nor is he particularly funny. He closes his laptop with more force than necessary, before the questions about what exactly he thinks he’s trying to do begin to choke him. 

The refrigerator beckons; he lets himself stare blankly at its contents for a few long moments, and hopes that Ryan doesn’t go anywhere. “Why did we never—”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Shane says, biting down hard on his bottom lip. He reaches for a beer on the top shelf and has to stop himself from pulling one out for Ryan too. 

On the couch again, he scoots his laptop to the the side and sprawls out, his head eventually coming to rest near a cold patch he knows is Ryan. Shane sucks in a long breath, and steels himself. This shouldn’t be so hard, considering the situation, and yet none of it feels quite real. “It’s just—I think was in love with you, but we never allowed ourselves to be anything more than whatever the fuck we were,” Shane says, the words falling out of him like boulders down a mountainside. Irretrievable. “What were we so afraid of?”

There’s no reply, but Shane slowly becomes aware that the cold spot beside him as vanished. 

“It’s not fair,” Ryan says, voice choked. The contents of the coffee table—books, coasters, remotes, old dishes—are knocked to the floor by an unseen hand. “We didn’t have enough time.”

For the first time in a while, Shane feels his throat constrict. There’s nothing to distract him from the tragedy of it all, not anymore. All that’s left is the knowledge of the missed connection. He realizes, then, that there’s no mending this—they are always going to be left unfinished. There’s nothing to be done but keep moving forward, into the unknown and the already incomplete. 

“I’m so sorry,” he chokes out, and hopes Ryan is listening. 

 

 

 

_Their flight doesn’t pull into the gate at LAX until late, and it’s even later once they’ve extracted themselves from the airport miasma and climbed into an Uber together. The haze of travel hasn’t quite broken yet—it still feels normal for Shane to slide across the backseat and hunch to lay his head against Ryan’s shoulder, and for Ryan to let an arm encircle him without breaking his eyes from the city passing by out the window. The ride feels endless; time ceases to pass. Shane pulls out his phone, but not before that same warm, mildly distressing thought comes back to him: there really isn’t anything like this._

_“What’re you doing?” Ryan asks, breaking through the hum of the car and the evening outside._

_“Working on the next installment in the hot dog epic.”_

_“Ugh. Fuck you.” Ryan’s laugh echoes through both of them._

_OutKast comes on the radio, flowing distantly from the front seat. Streetlights flicker over them, throwing everything into warm, shifting tones. He feels pliant, unwound. They pull up to Shane’s apartment first, and there’s a moment where neither of them moves._

_Then Ryan turns, cups Shane’s face in his hands, and says, “You know I love you, big guy.”_

_He hesitates. “I know.”_

_It’s the wrong thing to say. It’s not what he means, but suddenly his mouth is empty and useless. Ryan’s face doesn’t quite fall, but something in his eyes flattens out. Still, he laughs at the Star Wars reference, and Shane squeezes his hand and slips out of the car._

_It hits him, finally, once he’s standing on the curb and watching the Uber disappear around a corner. He whips out his phone again, types and deletes and types again. He doesn’t know what it will mean for them, not entirely. But it’s a place to start._

I love you too, asshole. Text me when you get home safe.

_Some kid runs a stop sign. Ryan never reads it._

 

 

 

There seems to be appetite for the new, darker version of Unsolved. The version wherein Shane, alone and angry, attempts to encounter the paranormal—skeptical enough to quip at suspicious sounds but open enough to shut up and let things happen. The change in vibe is garnering a truly absurd number of views on Youtube. He wonders, idly, if this is really his doing or just where they were inevitably headed. Both possibilities leave him in a fog of disbelief. 

And then suddenly he’s pitching a pilot to Netflix. 

An hour before the scheduled meeting he stands in front of the mirror on the back of his closet door and fiddles with the only tie he owns, straining for the sound of footsteps or breaking glass. Ryan has been in and out, lately, his voice softer and more distorted. Shane’s apartment is more intact than it’s been in months, but now he misses the cracked dishes and toppled lamps. 

Then a voice says, “Your hair looks like shit.”

Shane runs a hand through it, mussing it further. “I know.”

He has the vague sense of Ryan following him into the kitchen, watching him reach for the kettle and a mug. Ryan says, “So, Netflix. That’s so fucking cool.”

“It’s what you want?” Shane asks, without looking up from the stove. 

“Of course, dude. That’s the dream.”

Shane sends a subdued smile to the corner Ryan is most likely lurking in. “Good.”

The water boils; Shane settles his lower back against the counter and sips from his mug until some of the tension in his shoulders releases. The Netflix execs have sent a car—it’ll be outside his front stoop within the hour. And then he’ll be deciding his own destiny in a boardroom somewhere, in a borrowed suit with his hair sticking up at all angles. He takes a deep breath. “You’ll be with me out there, won’t you?”

Ryan’s voice is soft and far away. “Always.”

 

 

 

The number they throw out after going through some of the production details is so shatteringly large that he panics and says he needs some time to think it over. Apparently, this is a normal response—the woman seated at the head of the table in nine hundred dollar shoes smiles understandingly and says, “Please do.”

A new crew, a new title, a new platform. Same Shane Madej. He’s surprised by how much he wants this, and not just for Ryan’s sake, either. Or maybe it still is about Ryan—it feels like the only way to keep him close is to continue on in the same vein as before. To walk the same path and pretend as though it’ll last forever. That strange, lingering thought comes back: _there really isn’t anything like this._

It’s the last remaining thread; he’ll pull on it until it stops hurting. And maybe a little more after that. 

He comes home to the empty apartment and immediately tosses off the jacket and tie. The room is stifling, so Shane trots out toward the scorched courtyard, pulls a reclined lawn chair out from the clutches of some overgrown cacti and sprawls out, a beer in hand. Ryan, from somewhere behind his lolled head, says, “Do you believe I’m really here? That you’re not going insane?”

Shane is silent for a long time. Staring at the sun is easier than staring at what remains of Ryan. He’s no longer a shadow, but something emptier—a smudge of strange air and nothing more. “I want to.”

The sound of cars on the freeway behind the fence fills the silence. Shane feels very, very alone.

“Shane, it’s so beautiful,” Ryan sighs. “I can’t wait for you to see it all.”

He’s gone after that. Shane knows it, but he still calls out, “Ryan?” into the hot sky, only to feel his voice break on the last syllable. 

Then he stands, rubs at his eyes one last time, and he turns back toward the door. The dry grass crunches under his feet.

 

 

 

He dreams of that night, often. Of the two of them in the back of the Uber, the dappled light, the closeness of their silence. There’s something immemorial about it that fits easily into the fog of a dreamscape, wherein time can seem to pass and pause simultaneously. Here, the ride really can last forever. _There really isn’t anything like this._ He can feel the rise and fall of Ryan’s chest for as long as he pleases. 

Until he wakes up, that is. 

Shane lies in the cool dark for a long time, soaking in the stillness of the room. He knows he’s alone. The framed photos haven’t fallen off the walls in weeks. All his glassware is intact. Regardless, the words form on his lips. Words from another era. Words he should released long ago.

“I love you,” Shane says. 

There is no reply.

**Author's Note:**

> lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
